Colorado Oil and Gas Association contributions to support fracking in cities with a moratorium on their ballot this fall:

Fort Collins: $256,134

Broomfield: $171,238

Boulder: $110,337

Lafayette: $66,974

Total: $604,683

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association has poured more than half a million dollars into efforts to fight fracking moratoriums on the ballot in Broomfield, Boulder, Lafayette and Fort Collins, according to campaign-finance reports filed this week.

The industry trade group contributed a total of $604,683 to campaigns in the four Front Range cities, with $256,134 going to Fort Collins, $171,238 to Broomfield, $110,337 to Boulder and $66,974 to Lafayette.

Merrily Mazza, a candidate for the Lafayette City Council who worked on getting anti-drilling Question 300 on to the November ballot in Lafayette, said she found the amount spent by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association "amazing."

"We expected it, but it's still surprising when you see it," she said Wednesday.

Lafayette Campaign for Energy Choice reported $67,074 in contributions from mid-September through Oct. 10, with all but $100 of that coming from the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. By contrast, anti-fracking group East Boulder County United took in $1,762 during the same period.

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But former State House Rep. B.J. Nikkel, who is serving as an adviser to the anti-moratorium campaigns along the Front Range, said the industry needs to get out its message and counter the "hype and misinformation" put out there by anti-fracking activists that drilling presents unacceptable environmental and human health risks.

Mail-in ballots started going out to voters in Boulder and Broomfield counties earlier this week.

"It's truly a disservice to the public to be giving misinformation and to use fear-mongering in the campaign," she said. "It's important for our local economies to develop energy."

'Up against consultants in Denver'

Lafayette Campaign for Energy Choice not only raised more than its adversary but far outspent it in its efforts to defeat Question 300, which would permanently ban any new oil and gas drilling -- including the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing -- inside Lafayette city limits.

The committee's filing shows that it has so far paid nearly $14,000 to Denver-based iKue Strategies for consulting services, mailings and brochures. It also made a separate expenditure of $1,000 for accounting services.

By contrast, East Boulder County United spent $2,322 for yard signs, printing and volunteer training during the reporting period, and helped cover some campaign costs for its anti-fracking counterpart Our Broomfield.

"It's hard to believe that while we're getting small contributions and have had people who actually live here out knocking on doors and walking the streets, they're buying outside people to tell them what to do in this community," Mazza said. "We're up against consultants in Denver."

East Boulder County United collected more than 2,000 signatures from Lafayette residents over the summer to get Question 300, dubbed the Lafayette Community Rights Act, in front of voters after the City Council declined to refer the measure to the ballot.

The council instead passed a three-year moratorium on any new oil and gas drilling activity in the city. There hasn't been a new well drilled in Lafayette in more than a decade.

Bans not 'an energy plan'

Doug Flanders, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association's director of policy and external affairs, said the proposed fracking bans are shortsighted and do nothing to address Colorado's need for reliable, domestic sources of energy.

"On behalf of the 100,000 Colorado families who have an enormous stake in the outcome of these ballot initiatives, we are financially supporting the local groups who oppose the bans," he said Wednesday. "Banning a product we all use every day is damaging to the Colorado brand of compromise and reasonableness. These bans are not an energy plan."

The industry further argues that there is no conclusive evidence that fracking, which involves injecting a water-sand-chemical mixture into the ground to crack rock and loosen hard-to-get deposits of gas, is harmful to health.

"Fracking has been around since 1947," Nikkel said. "There have been a lot of tests done over time to prove it is safe."

Drilling advocates have said banning fracking would encroach on mineral owners' rights to extract oil or gas from their property. And according to a study done this year by the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business, the industry provides work for thousands of people in Colorado. Nearly 30,000 people work in the state's oil and gas fields, a 34 percent increase since 2009, the study found.

Boulder goes anti-frack

But an increasing number of people worry about other studies that show that air is polluted around well sites and that water can become contaminated, especially as the result of spills or accidents. Others have complained of health problems due to nearby drilling, though the causal link between the industrial activity and illness isn't always easy to prove.

Nonetheless, oil and gas drilling in Colorado has increased dramatically over the last few years and closer to where people live. Nowadays, rigs frequently set up in and around residential neighborhoods, prompting an angry backlash from homeowners bothered by the lights, noise and smell of the operations.

According to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, there are 51,400 active wells in the state. Nearly half of them are in Weld County.

That has led communities like Boulder, which faces little prospect it will ever see drilling activity because of its distance from northeastern Colorado's gas-rich Wattenberg Basin, to propose its own fracking moratorium. And the ensuing resistance from the industry has come right along with it.

This week's filings show that the Colorado Oil and Gas Association has given $110,337 to anti-moratorium group Boulder Citizens for Rational Energy Decisions to fight the proposed ban on the November ballot. The committee spent almost $17,000 on consulting services.

Robert Duffy, a political science professor at Colorado State University, said the amount the Colorado Oil and Gas Association has spent on fracking ballot issues is surprisingly large. The six-figure donation is more typical of statewide issues, not smaller, municipal-focused elections, he said.

"It strikes me as a very big amount of money in its own right, considering it's a municipal election," he said. "The imbalance of funds is so enormous, regardless of how you feel about the issue."

Duffy said the large amount of funding raises questions about the association's motivations for writing big checks. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association is part of a lawsuit against Longmont, a city that banned fracking last year, and Duffy said it's possible that the money is part of an effort to avoid future lawsuits with other cities where a fracking ban could occur.

'We have the grassroots support'

In Broomfield, that ban could go for five years in the form of Question 300. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association has contributed a total of $171,238 so far to pro-fracking groups in Broomfield in order to defeat the ballot measure.

The association contributed $156,238 to the Broomfield Balanced Energy Coalition, a pro-fracking group led by former state Rep. Don Beezley, a Republican, and former RTD board member Lee Kemp, who last year ran for state Senate as a Democrat. The group received $100 from other sources, including $50 from Kemp.

The committee supports Broomfield's new agreement with oil and gas drilling company Sovereign, which imposes strict environmental and regulatory standards in order for the company to continue drilling within city limits. The majority of the group's spending went to purchasing yard signs, fliers and a rental deposit for space to host a fracking discussion.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association also contributed $15,000 to It's Our Broomfield, Too, a Broomfield citizen group that supports fracking in the city. The group reported $16,182 in total contributions from mid-September through Oct. 10.

Broomfield's anti-fracking group, Our Broomfield, said the Colorado Oil and Gas Association is trying to intimidate voters by spending large amounts of money on the issue. Our Broomfield has reported $4,952 in contributions between May and Oct. 10, almost solely from small local donations. Legal services and door hangers made up the majority of the group's expenses.

Our Broomfield member Laura Fronckiewicz was prepared to see big money come into the race, but she said that won't do anything to detract from the local nature of her group's effort to ban fracking.

"We have the grassroots support," Fronckiewicz said. "It's a daunting number (from the opposition), but we feel we have the feet on the street and the support from the Broomfield residents. That's definitely the difference between us and the opposition."